My Mother's Hands

I sit beside my mother in her close room, the shades drawn against the August heat in Minneapolis. Outside, I know the lake is glistening. Birds are resting.

She is comfortably reclined in her Cadillac of a wheel chair that she got as soon as she began losing enough weight to trigger hospice care.

She is wisp of her former body. Light as a feather.

When I was a young girl, I used to sit beside her while she read, playing with the veins that flowed like blue rivers beneath her luminous, soft skin.⁠ ⁠

Looking back, she must have liked it because she never tried to stop me.

It was a moment of silent intimacy, one not afforded us often because she was awkward with closeness. I learned young that touching her hands with gentle curiosity was a way in, a way to her heart. ⁠ ⁠

Now, she is dying. Still. Again. She is folded in on herself, lost in her dementia, unable to speak. I make the approach slowly, because for many years she would tense with the touch as though stung by a bee.

But this day, a young man plays the guitar and sings to her, to us really. She tilts her head like a bird toward the sound, blinking her rheumy blue eyes. ⁠ ⁠

Her hand is folded tightly against her breast bone and her mouth. I touch one of her fingers and suddenly like a bird taking flight, she opens all of her fingers and lands on my hand, pressing mine to her chest. We stay like this, Nick strumming his guitar, tears spilling down my cheeks. ⁠ ⁠

I want to stay like this forever.